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How to update deployment images virtually

Answered How to update deployment images virtually

  • Thursday, May 10, 2012 6:05 PM
     
     
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    Hi,

    I am looking to build and service images virtually on my tech PC, with either VMWare player, VirtualBox or Windows Virtual PC, does not matter to me which.

    I have tried all three solutions and was expecting that they should be able to boot PXE from WDS, so I could deploy/build a basic image for updating/servicing and recapture for re-deployment to physical computers.

    None of virtual solutions could boot from WDS, although my physical host computer does just fine. I hit f12 at PXE boot and it just fails stating boot manager no OS found. I am new to the whole virtual world and I assume that I might be missing something. 

    I am assuming that my virtual clients are using the same NIC drivers that are running on my host machine. Do I need to configure something on my WDS server? Do I need to add some special virtual NIC drivers to my boot images? Do I need to use a special NIC setting on my virtual clients?

    This solution needs to support x64 images. I was told Windows Virtual PC only supports x86 images. 

    Any help much appreciated,

     

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  • Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:34 PM
     
     
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    Seeing the error you're discribing it's not an issue with the drivers within the boot images itself.

    Seeing how you need x64 support, you cannot use virtual pc. You would need to use Hyper-V if you wanted to use a microsoft solution in that case.

    The important thing to allow a virtual machine to access the same network resources as the host partition is that the network interface is "bridged". This means that the virtual network adapter will fall within the same network scope as any physical device. If a nat, host-only or private connection is in place, the virtual machine cannot connect to outside resources.

    WDS does not require any different configuration to support PXE booting for VM's, if it works for physical machines it will work for VM's too. The actual network transfer of the bootimage before it's loaded into memory is done through tftp and is handled by the network "drivers" in the network firmware, once the image is loaded into the system memory the network drivers for windows will need to be present. Many virtualization software uses a standard virtualized intel network adapter which would work out of the box, however you can check for network connectivity once inside WinPE with ipconfig.

    Kind regards,

    Stephan Schwarz.

    If one of these posts answered your question or issue, please click on "Mark as answer".

    My Blog | Twitter: @Schwarz_Stephan | MCTS, MCITP, MCC.
    How to configure Windows RE/OEM Recovery Partition with MDT

     
  • Thursday, May 10, 2012 11:56 PM
     
     
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    Stephen,

    Thank you for taking the time to help with my question.

    Here are my results:

    VirtualBox

    The nic is bridged to my Intel 82566DC. When I try to boot from the 'Lan', it kicks right back with Fatal: Could not read from the boot medium! System halted. Does not even try to contact DHCP.

    VMWare Player:

    Also Bridged. it seems to try a little harder in that it says Network boot from Interl E1000 and tries to get an IP from DHCP but returns error, No DHCP offers were received PXE-E51, OS not found.

    I also have the option to replicate the connection state under the bridge setting, but same result.

    I am certainly willing to try anything you can think of,

    Thank you again for your help.

     

     
  • Tuesday, May 15, 2012 1:53 AM
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    Hi,


    This type issue occurs may be caused by the security program in physical machine affects the virtual machine’s connection.


    I suggest you temporarily removing the antivirus program and turn off Windows Firewall. You may need to turn off firewall on Server site.


    Meanwhile, please let us know if the WDS and the physical machine in the same subnet.

    Kim Zhou

    TechNet Community Support